Development Of False Memories Research Articles

Self-Enhanced False Memory Across the Life Span.

The role of self in veridical memory has been extensively studied, but what is the role of self in false memory development across the life span? The current study examined the impact of self-reference on associative false memory in children, younger adults, and older adults, and further investigated possible mechanisms concerning how self-reference might affect false memory in different age groups. Combining a self-reference manipulation with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, children, younger adults, and older adults encoded DRM word lists as paired with their own name, another person's name, or a red square. Later their true and false recognition memory as well as recollection and familiarity were measured. A self-enhanced false memory effect was found in all age groups. That is, participants generated more false memories in the self-reference condition relative to the other-reference and neutral conditions. Furthermore, when examining its underlying memory mechanisms, we found that self-reference mainly increased false recollection in younger adults but facilitated familiarity of critical lures in older adults. Although self-reference increases false memory in both younger and older adults, the underlying mechanisms are different in that older adults have more self-relevant false familiarity while younger adults generate more self-relevant phantom recollection. The current study also has implications for eyewitness reports, suggesting that the self-relevance of memory may be one relevant factor to consider when evaluating potential risk factors of false memory.

Misremembering Brexit: partisan bias and individual predictors of false memories for fake news stories among Brexit voters

ABSTRACT Exposure to fake news stories can result in false memories for the events portrayed, and this effect can be enhanced if the stories conform to the reader's ideological position. We exposed 1299 UK residents to fabricated news stories about Brexit. 44% of participants reported a false memory for at least one fabricated story, with a higher rate of false memories for stories that reflected poorly on the opposing side. This effect of ideological congruency was somewhat greater among participants who were exposed to a threat to their social identity as a Leave or Remain supporter; however, this moderating effect was only statistically significant in exploratory analyses using a more conservative definition of false memory. Participants with higher cognitive ability and analytical reasoning scores were less susceptible to false memories. Individuals with better knowledge about Brexit showed better discrimination between true and false stories, while self-reported engagement with the Brexit debate was associated with an increased tendency to “remember” any story, regardless of its truth. These results implicate a combination of social and individual factors in the development of false memories from fake news, and suggest that exposure to social identity threats may enhance the polarising effects of fake news.

Blunted cortisol response to acute pre-learning stress prevents misinformation effect in a forced confabulation paradigm

Research examining the effects of stress on false memory formation has been equivocal, partly because of the complex nature of stress-memory interactions. A major factor influencing stress effects on learning is the timing of stress relative to encoding. Previous work has shown that brief stressors administered immediately before learning enhance long-term memory. Thus, we predicted that brief stress immediately before learning would decrease participants' susceptibility to subsequent misinformation and reduce false memory formation. Eighty-four male and female participants submerged their hand in ice cold (stress) or warm (no stress) water for 3min. Immediately afterwards, they viewed an 8-min excerpt from the Disney movie Looking for Miracles. The next day, participants were interviewed and asked several questions about the video, some of which forced them to confabulate responses. Three days and three weeks later, respectively, participants completed a recognition test in the lab and a free recall test via email. Our results revealed a robust misinformation effect, overall, as participants falsely recognized a significant amount of information that they had confabulated during the interview as having occurred in the original video. Stress, overall, did not significantly influence this misinformation effect. However, the misinformation effect was completely absent in stressed participants who exhibited a blunted cortisol response to the stress, for both recognition and recall tests. The complete absence of a misinformation effect in non-responders may lend insight into the interactive roles of autonomic arousal and corticosteroid levels in false memory development.

The impact of sleep on true and false memory across long delays

While the influence of sleep on memory has a long history, sleep’s role in the formation of false memories is less clear. Moreover, virtually nothing is known about the development of false memories beyond delays of about 12h. Here, for the first time, we assess post-sleep development of true and false memories across longer delay intervals of 24 and 48h. Although technically a false memory, remembering information that is related to the theme, or gist, of an experience can be considered an adaptive process. Some evidence suggests that sleep, compared to a wake period, increases both true and gist-based false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task, but not all studies have returned this result, and most studies cannot rule out the possibility that sleep is merely protecting the information from interference, as opposed to actively aiding its consolidation. Here, to equate amount of time spent awake and asleep across groups, we assess how the positioning of sleep relative to memory encoding impacts retention across longer delays of 24 and 48h. Participants encoded 16 DRM lists in the morning (WAKE 1st Groups) or evening (SLEEP 1st Groups), and were tested either 24 or 48h later at the same time of day. Results demonstrate that true memory is better when participants sleep soon after learning. Sleeping first also increased false memory, but only in low performers. Importantly, and similar to previous studies, we found a negative correlation between slow-wave sleep (SWS) and false memory, suggesting that SWS may be detrimental for semantic/gist processing.

The impact of outcome valence on the susceptibility to suggestion for post-event causal misinformation

ABSTRACTRecent research has demonstrated that people are especially susceptible to false memory development for suggested misinformation that fills a causal role (i.e., explains some known outcome) (Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2013). However, little is known about how factors associated with the witnessed outcome impact the likelihood of false memory development. In the present study, outcome valence (negative, positive, or neutral) was manipulated. Participants heard several short stories that contained an outcome (e.g., a counselor getting promoted) that lacked a causal explanation. Participants were subsequently exposed to suggested causal misinformation that explained that outcome (e.g., the counselor performed an impressive act the previous day) and then were tested on their memory for the original event. Results indicated that participants incorrectly reported the suggested causal information more when it explained either a positive or negative outcome as opposed to a neutral outcome. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Hypnotizability, Not Suggestion, Influences False Memory Development

Hypnotizability influences the development of false memories. In Experiment 1, participants heard a positive or negative suggestion regarding hypnosis and then listened to 8 Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm lists in a hypnotic state. Neither hypnosis nor prehypnotic suggestion affected memory. Highly hypnotizable participants were more accurate in recall and recognition. In Experiment 2, suggestions were delivered in the form of feedback. Participants heard a positive or negative suggestion about their performance prior to either the encoding or retrieval of 8 DRM lists. Neither accurate nor false memories were affected by the suggestion. Highly hypnotizable individuals recognized fewer critical lures if they received a negative suggestion about their performance. These results highlight the unusual role of hypnotizability in the creation of false memories.

Did the perpetrator have a gun, or did he not? – Children’s false memories and the developmental reversal phenomenon

Developmental reversal in false memories is the counterintuitive phenomenon that older children and adults are more prone to developing false memories than younger children and that false memories increase with age. The current paper discusses the theories behind this phenomenon and the paradigms that can be used to investigate it. Not only age is a prominent factor in the development of false memories. The role of emotional load of the falsely remembered words will also be investigated.

Individual Differences in Susceptibility to False Memories for Neutral and Trauma-Related Words

People with a known propensity towards false memories may be considered less credible eyewitnesses. It is therefore important to investigate individual factors related to susceptibility to false memory development. The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) procedure involves participants remembering lists of related words. The tendency to produce critical lures – words not originally presented, but strongly related to the studied words – is considered a measure of susceptibility to false memories. Participants completed the DRM using neutral and trauma-related words along with measures of dissociation, post-traumatic cognitions and the looming cognitive style. Analyses indicated that dissociation was related to false recall for traumatic stimuli; higher levels of post-traumatic cognitions were associated with a decrease in false recognition; and looming cognitive style was related to an increase in confabulations but a decrease in false recognition. The implications of this research are discussed.

When forced fabrications become truth: Causal explanations and false memory development.

Studies of text comprehension have amply demonstrated that when reading a story, people seek to identify the causal and motivational forces that drive the interactions of characters and link events (e.g., Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995), thereby achieving explanatory coherence. In the present study we provide the first evidence that the search for explanatory coherence also plays a role in the memory errors that result from suggestive forensic interviews. Using a forced fabrication paradigm (e.g., Chrobak & Zaragoza, 2008), we conducted 3 experiments to test the hypothesis that false memory development is a function of the explanatory role these forced fabrications served (the explanatory role hypothesis). In support of this hypothesis, participants were more likely to subsequently freely report (Experiment 1) and falsely assent to (Experiment 2) their forced fabrications when they helped to provide a causal explanation for a witnessed outcome than when they did not serve this explanatory role. Participants were also less likely to report their forced fabrications when their explanatory strength had been reduced by the presence of an alternative explanation that could explain the same outcome as their fabrication (Experiment 3). These findings extend prior research on narrative and event comprehension processes by showing that the search for explanatory coherence can continue for weeks after the witnessed event is initially perceived, such that causally relevant misinformation from subsequent interviews is, over time, incorporated into memory for the earlier witnessed event.

When plausibility manipulations work: An examination of their role in the development of false beliefs and memories

In the current study we examined whether prevalence information and imagery encoding influence participants' general plausibility, personal plausibility, belief, and memory ratings for suggested childhood events. Results showed decreases in general and personal plausibility ratings for low prevalence events when encoding instructions were not elaborate; however, instructions to repeatedly imagine suggested events elicited personal plausibility increases for low-prevalence events, evidence that elaborate imagery negated the effect of our prevalence manipulation. We found no evidence of imagination inflation or false memory construction. We discuss critical differences in researchers' manipulations of plausibility and imagery that may influence results of false memory studies in the literature. In future research investigators should focus on the specific nature of encoding instructions when examining the development of false memories.

The development of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false recall

In three experiments, we investigated the role of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false memory development in children and adults. Experiment 1 incorporated a directed forgetting task to examine controlled retrieval inhibition. Experiments 2 and 3 used a part-set cue and retrieval practice task to examine automatic retrieval inhibition. In the first experiment, the forget cue had no effect on false recall for adults but reduced false recall for children. In Experiments 2 and 3, both tasks caused retrieval impairments for true and false recall, and this occurred for all age groups. Implicit inhibition, which occurs outside of our conscious control, appears early in childhood. However, because young children do not process false memories as automatically as adults, explicit inhibition can reduce false memory output.

The role of sleep in false memory formation

Memories are not stored as exact copies of our experiences. As a result, remembering is subject not only to memory failure, but to inaccuracies and distortions as well. Although such distortions are often retained or even enhanced over time, sleep’s contribution to the development of false memories is unknown. Here, we report that a night of sleep increases both veridical and false recall in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, compared to an equivalent period of daytime wakefulness. But while veridical memory deteriorates across both wake and sleep, false memories are preferentially preserved by sleep, actually showing a non-significant improvement. The same selectivity of false over veridical memories was observed in a follow-up nap study. Unlike previous studies implicating deep, slow-wave sleep (SWS) in declarative memory consolidation, here veridical recall correlated with decreased SWS, a finding that was observed in both the overnight and nap studies. These findings lead to two counterintuitive conclusions – that under certain circumstances sleep can promote false memories over veridical ones, and SWS can be associated with impairment rather than facilitation of declarative memory consolidation. While these effects produce memories that are less accurate after sleep, these memories may, in the end, be more useful.

Opposite developmental trends for false recognition of basic and superordinate names

This study investigated the development of false memories for basic and superordinate names using the DRM procedure. Two experiments were conducted with younger (3–5 years old) and older (10–12 years old) children. In the first experiment the DRM procedure was used with categorised lists and in the second experiment both types of lists—categorised and associative—were applied. False recognition for basic and superordinate names showed opposite developmental trends, regardless of list type. False recognition increased for critical-basic items and decreased for critical-superordinate items with age. These opposing results are mainly explained by age differences in conceptual knowledge and editing processes.

Inventing stories: Forcing witnesses to fabricate entire fictitious events leads to freely reported false memories

Studies of the forced fabrication effect have shown that participant witnesses are prone to developing false memories for specific items or details that they have been forced to fabricate earlier (e.g., what type of hat someone wore). Building on these earlier findings, the present study assessed whether participants would develop false memories if forced to fabricate entire fictitious events that were more complex and extended in time and involved people, locations, and actions that they had never seen. Participants vehemently resisted fabricating these events, and false memory development over the short term (1-week recognition test) was limited. However, after 8 weeks, participants freely reported their forced fabrications nearly 50% of the time and did so even when they had correctly and publicly rejected them earlier on the 1-week recognition test. This is the first evidence that participant witnesses will freely incorporate into their eyewitness accounts entire fictitious events that they have earlier been forced to fabricate.

The role of associative strength in children's false memory illusions

The effects of associative strength on rates of 7- and 11-year-old children's true and false memories were examined when category and Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists were used to cue the same critical lure. Backward associative strength (BAS) was varied such that the category and DRM lists had the same strength (DRM=category), DRM lists had more BAS (DRM>category), or category lists had more BAS (DRM<category). If BAS drives children's false memories then BAS, not the type of relation across items in a list, should determine false memory production. The results confirmed this prediction using both recall and recognition measures: (1) both true and false memories increased with age, (2) true memory was better for category than DRM lists but there were no differences for false memory, and (3) at all ages, false memories varied predictably with changes in BAS but were unaffected by list-type manipulations. These findings are discussed in the context of models of false memory development.

Children’s false memories: Easier to elicit for a negative than for a neutral event

The present study examined the role of valence in the development of children’s implanted false memories. Seventy-six 7-year-old children listened to two true and one false narrative. The false narrative was either neutral (“moving to another classroom”) or emotional negative (“being accused by the teacher for copying off your neighbor”). In addition, half of the children were presented with their class photograph while listening to the narratives. During two interviews, children recalled as many details as possible from the true and false events. Results showed that the negative event elicited more false memories than the neutral event. The presentation of a true photograph did not promote the development of false memories.

The role of emotional elaboration in the creation of false memories

AbstractTwo experiments employed an eyewitness suggestibility paradigm to examine the effects of emotional elaboration on the creation of false memories for suggested events. The results of both experiments converge in showing that reflectively elaborating on the emotional consequences of suggested events increases both false belief and false memory in having witnessed the suggested events. Moreover, the results also showed that emotional elaboration leads to higher false memory than other types of meaningful elaboration, thus providing evidence that the emotional content of the elaboration plays a role in promoting false memory development. The results have several real‐world implications for forensic and therapeutic interviews. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

What is false memory development the development of? Comment on Brainerd, Reyna, and Ceci (2008).

In this commentary, assumptions about the nature and development of children's false memories as described in a recent article by C. J. Brainerd, V. F. Reyna, and S. J. Ceci (2008) are reviewed. Specifically, questions are raised about what drives the development of false memories in fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). Recent studies that challenge a core assumption of FTT, that false memory illusions increase across development as children learn to establish meaningful connections across items (i.e., establish gist), are discussed. An alternative conceptualization of the development of false memory illusions, associative-activation theory (AAT), is presented. AAT provides as viable an account of the development of false memory illusions as does FTT and anticipates a unique set of outcomes that have recently appeared in the developmental literature on false memory illusions.

Familiarity breeds distortion: The effects of media exposure on false reports concerning media coverage of the terrorist attacks in London on 7 July 2005

The present experiment investigated whether increased media exposure could lead to an increase in memory distortions regarding a traumatic public event: the explosion of the No. 30 bus in Tavistock Square, London on 7 July 2005. A total of 150 Swedish and 150 UK participants completed a series of questionnaires about their memory of either (i) the aftermath of the explosion, (ii) a non-existent computerised reconstruction of the moment of the explosion, or (iii) non-existent closed circuit television footage of the moment of the explosion. In line with the availability heuristic, UK participants were more likely than Swedish participants to claim to have seen all three types of footage. Furthermore, a sub-sample of UK participants who appeared to have developed false “memories” of seeing the No. 30 bus explode scored significantly higher on measures of dissociation and fantasy proneness than participants who did not develop false “memories”. This experiment provides further support for the role of imaginative processes in the development of false memories.

Development of false memories in bilingual children and adults

The effects of within- versus between-languages (English–French) study and test on rates of bilingual children’s and adults’ true and false memories were examined. Children aged 6 through 12 and university-aged adults participated in a standard Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory task using free recall and recognition. Recall results showed that: (1) both true and false memories increased with age, (2) true recall was higher in within- than between-languages conditions for all ages, and (3) there were fewer false memories in between-languages conditions than within-language conditions for the youngest children, no differences for the 8 and 12 years old, and by adulthood, there were more false memories in between-languages than within-language conditions. Recognition results showed that regardless of age, false recognition rates tended to be higher in between-languages than within-language conditions. These findings are discussed in the context of models of false memory development.